By The Seat of Your Pants is an episode of Happy Tree Friends, the twenty-fourth (and final) episode of Internet Season 3, and the 78th episode overall.
HTF Episode Description
Lumpy has Flippy over to watch a swimming competition on T.V. but is caught with his pants down. It’s sink or swim time as Lumpy tries to keep one step ahead of Flippy. Which one of them is going to get caught “underwear”?
Plot
The TV turns on to reveal Cuddles and Giggles about to compete in a swimming race. Flippy sits on a chair as Lumpy brings a piece of cheese and a potato peeler on a plate. Unfortunately, The Mole fires his starting pistol and causes Flippy to flip out. Grabbing the potato peeler, he slices a piece of skin off Lumpy's rump. Upon realizing the danger he is in, Lumpy tries to escape through a window, which Flippy closes on him.
Lumpy manages to free himself, but by skinning his lower torso and legs. He pulls his skin, now resembling a pair of pants, out the window. The wound reveals Flippy about to finish the job, so he runs away. Seconds later, a butterfly lands on Flippy's hand and reverts him back to normal.
Meanwhile, Lumpy tries to put his skin back on and stumbles into a laundromat. He throws his skin into a washer, but it shrinks to the appearance of swim briefs. However, Lumpy sees Disco Bear on TV, about to compete at the swim competition, and gets another idea.
Russell, Cro-Marmot, Disco Bear and Lumpy later appear at the swimming pool for the next event. Flippy is seen sitting with the audience, raising a flag. As Lumpy gets ready to dive, he puts on his goggles, and The Mole fires his pistol which startles Flippy again. After a quick dive, Lumpy surfaces to find Flippy flipped out, with all of the audience massacred (except for Handy whose legs are cut off).
Swimming to the other end of the pool, Lumpy cringes as Flippy pounces. However, Flippy bounces off Lumpy's "briefs", and onto a flag pole. Impaled, he painfully tries to climb back up to safety. Frantically trying to get Flippy down, Lumpy raises down the flag and ends up killing him. As Lumpy salutes, his skin briefs slide down his legs.
Moral
Put your pants on one leg at a time.
Deaths
- Flaky is split in half. (death not seen)
- Nutty is drowned. (death not seen)
- Toothy and Truffles are beheaded. (deaths not seen)
- Giggles is impaled by a stick. (death not seen)
- Sniffles' head is cut in half. (death not seen)
- An elephant and one or more Generic Tree Friends are also killed by Flippy. (deaths not seen)
- Flippy is impaled on a flag pole and subsequently disemboweled by Lumpy.
Injuries
- Lumpy's skin from the waist down is torn off.
- Handy's feet have been cut off.
Goofs
- Lumpy's antlers change directions, sometimes during continuing shots.
- The TV channel was changed in the beginning, but the TV buttons were not visibly touched and no remote was seen.
- If Giggles was a competitor, why was she in the audience? (she could have been allowed to join after her race)
- David Winn and Aubrey Ankrum are the only voice actors to have their names written in the credits (in the "Voices" section), despite the voices from characters that aren't voiced by any of the mentioned voice actors are heard.
- It would not be possible for Flippy to return to normal by seeing a butterfly, considering he once killed a woodpecker. Though it could be because he has more power to control himself.
- Nutty and Truffles were nowhere to be seen in the audience, but when Lumpy surfaces, Nutty's arm was sticking out of the water and Truffles' severed head was seen at the poolside. It is possible one or both of them were inside the car before it crashed.
- Lumpy didn't stain the pool water when he swam.
- Lumpy didn't feel pain upon walking despite the skin of his feet were also ripped of.
- When Lumpy is shown underwater Nutty's dead body is nowhere to be seen.
- When Handy's legs are cut off his bones aren't visible.
- Lumpy spends only half a second underwater, yet Flippy managed to kill the audience, an elephant, a Generic Tree Friend, Nutty and Truffles. And he also had to flip out, because he was normal before Lumpy was underwater. This may be another signal showing Flippy kills quite fast.
- When Lumpy is about to dive in, Disco Bear's left ear and chest hair are missing (unless, the scene took place from an angle)
- After Flippy flips out and causes the carnage, Sniffles is briefly seen close to him when he was really at the far side of the bench.
- It's possible that Flippy put Sniffles close to him before killing him.
- Sniffles is seen 'floating' when he is shown (or he was sitting down, but it looked as if he was floating).
- It's odd Cro-Marmot participating in the swimming contest considering several characters are aware of what his block of ice can do in the water.
- When Flippy gets impaled by the flag pole and slides down, a bit of his hand is missing.
- Disco Bear can be seen in the swimming competition in this episode, despite his inability to swim in See What Develops. ( Though he might have drowned because the water reached the ceiling of the store making it impossible to breathe.
Trivia
- The title of this episode is another way of saying "by the seat of one's pants," which is a figurative way of saying "by sheer luck."
- This is the first episode of 2013, and the only Season 3 episode to premiere in 2013.
- The text For Max is seen at the beginning of the episode. Meaning that the episode is dedicated to a person by the name of "Max".
- This marks the second time a text is shown before the episode. The first was in We're Scrooged!.
- This is the first time to show Russell's being topless. It is shown that he lacks a belly marking.
- It is strange that, this time, Russell took off his shirt despite many other times where he was swimming that he remained fully clothed.
- The screws and lines on the walls are while Flippy and Lumpy are watching T.V. are the same but in different places as the storyboard.
- This is the second time that guns have been shown in a Happy Tree Friends episode, in this case a starting pistol. The first time was in Ka-Pow's Operation: Tiger Bomb, although no guns in that episode were fired.
- Truffles' head is shown on the left side of the pool, after Lumpy dives in the water. This marks his second confirmed death, the first being All In Vein.
- After Lumpy, this makes Flippy the second character to kill Truffles, and his first time doing so.
- On the storyboard it shows Petunia with Cuddles, instead of Giggles.
- This is the second internet episode Russell and Disco Bear survive. The first for Disco Bear is Stayin' Alive, and the first for Russell is Can't Stop Coffin.
- This is one of four episodes were Flippy is unable to kill Lumpy. The others were Remains to be Seen, Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow, and Double Whammy Part I.
- This is the first episode since Keepin' it Reel where Flippy kills Flaky, nearly ten years.
- Lumpy's injury is similar to Petunia's injury in Read 'em and Weep and a little earlier it was similar to Giggles' injury in Doggone It.
- The reason for Handy only being injured instead of killed is probably because of the irony now that he hasn't got hands and feet.
- However, This isn't the first time this happened; It happens first in Class Act.
- This is the second time that Flippy injures Lumpy without killing him (the first time being Remains to be Seen).
- Disco Bear is seen with closed eyes throughout the episode.
- This is the first time since Sea What I Found that Disco Bear wears something other than his usual clothing.
- This is the fourth time that Flippy died while in a flipped out state.
- This is the first time in the Internet series, and the second since Double Whammy, that Flippy has been brought out of his flipped-out state, and also flipped out more than once in a single episode.
- This is the second time that Russell, Cuddles and Handy survive the episode with Flippy in it, the first being in Double Whammy Part 1. Coincidentally, Handy and Russell are the only characters who Flippy hasn't killed while being face to face (though he did injure Handy in this episode). He killed them both in Remains To Be Seen but everyone died there in a car crash.
- This is the only Season 3 Internet short where Disco Bear appears without Splendid.
- This is Disco Bear's third appearance in Season 3. This makes Splendid, Lifty, and Shifty the characters with the least appearances in Season 3.
- This marks one of the few times when Lumpy kills intentionally. Though here he did it by self defense.
- Flippy being unable to kill Lumpy has become a running gag in the series.
- Most of the survivors were only killed once by Flippy before this episode. Lumpy was killed in Keepin' It Reel, Handy, Mole, and Russell in Remains To Be Seen, and Disco Bear in Double Whammy Part I). The only exceptions are Cro-Marmot and Cuddles - the former has never been killed by Flippy and the latter has been killed multiple times.
- Flippy's death is similar to Disco Bear's death in Sea What I Found and Russell's death In Get Whale Soon.
- After The Mole's second starting pistol, it appears that only Lumpy jumped in the pool, implying that the others were quick enough to notice Flippy flipping out and killing the others and decided to not jump in the pool to run away as the other competitors weren't seen for the rest of the episode.
- Lumpy was pretty smart in this episode despite the fact that he's always stupid. He was able to run away from Flippy, when his pants shrunk he used it as a speedo, and he was able to kill Flippy before Flippy could escape.
- Strangely, nobody seemed shocked that Lumpy was missing skin from the waist down.
- The Mole, Flippy and Lumpy were the only characters who were seen moving in the episode (apart from some blinking).
- This is the second time Cuddles survives an episode with Flippy. The first being Double Whammy Part I. But in fact, he along with Toothy were (debatably) killed in the alformentioned episode's second part.
- Sniffles' death is similar to Mime's death in See You Later, Elevator.
- The three characters that died in the previous episode (Handy, Lumpy, and The Mole) all survived this time.
- This episode is the first to have its complete storyboard revealed (uploaded to Mondo's website).
- This is the second episode where all the deaths took place off-screen. The first was in A Change of Heart. (Debatable)
- This is the first episode where Flippy kills Sniffles and Nutty without killing Mime as well.
- This is the only episode from season 3 that Disco Bear appears without Splendid.
- Flippy is the last character to die in season 3.
- This is the last episode of Season 3.
- This is the first season finale that doesn't have two parts.
- This makes Season 3 the shortest internet season, with only 24 episodes. Seasons 1 and 2 had 27 episodes each.
- Because Lumpy's veins were exposed, he should have felt a sharp pain when entering the water.
- According to the comments on YouTube, many people protested against Lumpy because of him killing Flippy, arguably the show's most popular character.